Martin B-51 Master - SORTED!

[Old Wombat]

Very weird but cool looking aircraft.   

[PR19_Kit]

Having polished off the Super Sealand I'm getting back onto the master now.

Trying to mask off those crazy forward engine pylons is a tricky job, I've tried three times to get the demarcation line to look correct, and each time rejected it.

Version #4 on the way.

[PR19_Kit]

Got the main Dark Sea Grey top colour on now, after sorting out the forward engine masking eventually. Most of it will only need one coat, that Hataka Blue Line paint is wonderful for we hairy stick users. 

Quite how the RAF's German theatre camo will work on the master I'm not sure, but it'll be a close facsimile of 16 Sqdn's Canberra B(I)8 scheme anyway.

It'll be a trifle bizarre that while the all British B(I)8s carried American Mk 7 nukes, the all American Master will be toting a very British Red Beard  nuke, 

Such is WhiffWorld of course. 

[PR19_Kit]

While waiting for some putty to dry off, covering the nose, bomb aimer's window (as I doubt they'd have needed that kind of accuracy when dropping a Red Beard.....) I started on painting the landing gear doors and wheels, but before that you need to add some greeblies..............

They supply a large number of PE hinges to fit on the upper edges of the doors, but you're meant to bend the edges over to give you some glueing area. I only found this out by reading the build thread on BritModeller mind you, it's not obvious from the instructions.

My attempts to glue them in place end-on were disastrous, and as my PE bender is 120 miles away I'm giving up on using the hinges. You'd have to pick the model up to look in and see them anyway!

[PR19_Kit]

The main colours are on the Master now, and one good thing about painting a camo scheme that doesn't really exist, is that the camo scheme doesn't really exist! 

It means it doesn't have to be totally accurate to some other scheme, it's automatically accurate anyway. In this case it's based on that used by 16 Sqdn's Canberra B(I)8s flying for RAFG in the 60s-70s, so it's Dark Sea Grey and Dark Green over Light Aircraft Grey. And as the Master is American, the landing gear bays and bomb bay are in Zinc Chromate! 

Luckily they're not too obvious as they're underneath of course.

Here it is with its first colour coat on, and it'll probably need another coat so the masking tape is still in place for now.

[Wardukw]

Ohh that looks cool 😎   
The colour's work surprisingly well for that weird arse plane 

I do wonder tho how that would look with the engines mounted on the wings and also...with longer wings too 🤔 😅

[Rick Lowe]

nd also...with longer wings too

Yeah, they do look a bit stubby, even without Kit's Rule #1 coming into play.

[Wardukw]

nd also...with longer wings too

Yeah, they do look a bit stubby, even without Kit's Rule #1 coming into play.

My very first thought when I first saw one of these was "Huh??".
It's like could ya have been more lazy and as unimaginative as possible when designing a plane
...it's those last "oh crap we forgot to find a place to mount the engines " which really annoys me..oh and the overall look of it 😅
Specking of longer wings 
I'm waiting for a new model coming over from Oz and Kit's first really has me thinking about a quite cool idea 💡 🤔 🙂

[Old Wombat]

I always liked the look of those forward-podded engines, not so keen on the tail-mounted engine, a couple of pods under the wings would have been cooler ... Or above & behind the wings!     

[PR19_Kit]

The wings of the Master can't really be any longer. It's meant to be a low altitude strike aircraft and down there the wings need to be shorter to alleviate gust response.

Much though I'd like to extend the wings (it's in my nature of course  ) I'll be leaving them the stock length.

I think the front engines need to be where they are to keep the CG sensible. The bomb bay is slap in the middle of the airframe, and it's a LONG airframe too, so having all the engines at one end would make it most unstable.

[Rick Lowe]

Those points make a lot of sense.

I guess we're just used to whatever the design norm has come to be.
If that had craft gone into production, we'd probably have a different status quo, or a number of them.

[jcf]

The other thing to bear in mind about the B-51, and one of the reasons why
the engines couldn't be mounted on the wings, is that the wings are variable
incidence. They rotate at the root, up to increase lift at takeoff, and to a lesser
degree when landing. I'm not sure whether or not the engines exhausting under
the wing aided in takeoff. The incidence is adjustable in flight throughout the
flight envelope. 

[jcf]

Those points make a lot of sense.

I guess we're just used to whatever the design norm has come to be.
If that had craft gone into production, we'd probably have a different status quo, or a number of them.

Doubtful, some configuration oddities have gone into production but have had no particular effect on aircraft design in general because the layout didn't convey any advantages over convential layouts.

[PR19_Kit]

I gave the model a coat of Klear prior to decaling, once I've drawn them up of course, but that didn't go well.

It looks like my Klear has deteriorated with age as it didn't self-level as it usually does, and while it's nicely shiny, it follows the contour of the various layers of paint. (I find acrylics don't self-level as well as enamels do either)

So I had to give it a light (VERY light) sanding all over and then sprayed it with some other clear varnish and that looks lots better.

[PR19_Kit]

I've got most of detail painting done on the Master now, and I've tried to put the wheels on............

I like to have flats on the bottom of the wheels of my models, in the real world aeroplanes don't stand on tip toe, they flatten their tyres, and this means I file a flat on the bottom of my model's wheels. This means in turn that the said wheels have to fit similarly from side to side, and front to back so all the flats are on the ground at the same time.

On the Master there's an added complication in that each wheel hub has a brake calliper and because the front and rear main wheel legs have opposing gear linkages each wheel can only fit one way round, and the flat has to align with the calliper etc. This would work well if the wheels would actually stay glued onto the legs, but they don't!

The holes moulded into the wheels are slightly too large for the stubs, most unlike most Eastern European kits which tend to be the other way round! So the wheels won't stay in position for long enough to turn the model right way up and align the flats, the wheels fall off! 

I've now tried to fit two wheels no less than FIVE times, and they've fallen off every time.